


Under Beaten Seas

by cassowarykisses



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Relationship, F/F, Pre-Dark Cybertron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassowarykisses/pseuds/cassowarykisses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Windblade, Chromia and Nautica are alone on Metroplex beneath the surface of an alien ocean, far from any Cybertronian (or, for that matter, Camian) contact. This is all fine by them, until a storm starts raging.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Beaten Seas

**Author's Note:**

> This is a (belated) birthday gift for trailbreakerofficial on tumblr.

Thunderclash had to be light-years away by now, and there was a storm raging. He probably would have known exactly what to do (which was fitting, consider his name, Chromia mused) and above all, would have had a full crew to help him. Problems Chromia could remember seeming inconsequential  onboard the Vis Vitalis, like cleaning or – or maintaining the docking bay,  were daunting inside Metroplex. More than half of that was probably that the Vis Vitalis was in much better repair, though – it had been years since anyone had repaired Metroplex, and even the incredible insides of a titan were beginning to show some wear. The storm was not helping him or, for that matter, Chromia’s nerves.

Metroplex’s struts groaned under the force of the water. It was hard to hear the storm this far underwater, but Nautica had gone up that morning and the waves had almost been too strong for her to come back down.

The airlock-turned-hydrolock was still working, and through a system involving Nautica yelling at Windblade over comm and then Windblade relaying her requests-slash-orders to Metroplex, she had gotten back in. Chromia hadn’t needed to be a cityspeaker to tell that Metroplex’s responses were unusually sluggish, though, and Windblade’s worry showed through across languages. The moment Nautica commed them to say she was arrived safe and relatively sound (her words), they took off.

Nautica barely waited for them to drop down off of the ladder into the room where she stood. “It’s like the Pit up there,” she said. “Well, I guess more watery, but you get my meaning.” She was dripping water all over the floor, and Chromia remembered the rust spattering Metroplex’s armor and the grooves worn into it by centuries-old laser fire. Weak points, all of them. She shared a glance with Windblade, and knew she was thinking the same thing.

Windblade was the first to speak. “Do you think it’s strong enough to hurt Metroplex?” She left unsaid what Chromia knew was the real question: Had it already hurt him? The water couldn’t be doing him any favors at its most tranquil – and it very obviously was not tranquil right now.

Nautica shrugged. “I bet it’s just a regular seasonal storm. We’re in the right zone on this planet to get the brunt of the monsoons.” She twisted an arm behind her, and tried to pull a clump of seaweed out of her turbines. “I mean, you’re the titan expert. I don’t know what they can withstand. A lot? I hope it’s a lot.”

Windblade stepped forward and pulled the offending seaweed off Nautica. “Thanks,” she said, pulling a small crustacean off her left arm. She made a face. “Bluuuh, can you believe this was on me?”

Windblade flicked her wings quickly to get Nautica’s attention back. “I don’t think Metroplex has been here long enough to have been through last year’s storms,” she said.

“If what Thunderclash told us is right, he was with Alpha Trion last year.” Chromia interrupted.

“Yes,” Windblade said, looking away from Nautica towards the wall. “Do you think there’s a chance . . . ?” she let herself trail off uncertainly.

“Nah, I don’t think we’re in serious danger.” Nautica said, standing on one leg and pulling some kind of gunk out of the tread of her right foot. Chromia wasn’t sure she wanted to identify it. Nautica put both feet on the ground and continued, spreading her arms. “I don’t know much about titans, but I know plenty about building things underwater. That was my first job back home.”

“Really?” Windblade asked, tilting her head. “I thought you just worked on the floating airstrips.”

Nautica grinned. “And how do you think we anchored those things? That was my best engineering job yet.” Chromia remembered the way they looked, like artfully arranged driftwood rafts on the surface of Caminus’s largest ocean. They’d been called some of the prettiest structures built outside of Caminus himself, and also wastes of energy.

“I would have wanted them to be more practical in design,” Nautica continued, “but that’s not the point! Once you get deep enough, the waves don’t matter anymore.” She gestured at the wall. “He’s not built to be this deep, but if he’s survived this long? He’s not going to break apart now. Maybe an increase in weird groaning noises from the walls, but nothing huge. I mean, none of us are going to die, and I’m including Metroplex in that group.”

Windblade frowned. “But the walls . . . If any of them spring leaks, I don’t think his self-repair can handle it on top of everything else.”

“Would it kill him?” Nautica asked.

“No, I don’t think so . . . “ Windblade said. “They didn’t really give us guides on how to kill titans –“

Chromia looked up at the ceiling, in the general direction of Metroplex’s head and his sensitive brain module. “Would that be profaning a sacred concept or something?” she asked.

“- Yeah. Or close enough to it for the Elders,” Windblade said. “But I do know it takes a lot of effort. That was probably self-evident, though.” She shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know what kind of punishment Metroplex can take.”

Chromia clapped her on the shoulder. “So go ask him, O Cityspeaker. Nobody knows your self-repair as well as you do.”

Taking a deep breath, Windblade looked up at her. “You’re right.”

“Really had to drag that one out of you, didn’t I?” Chromia said, grinning, and made a grab for Windblade’s arm.

“Can a mighty cityspeaker admit that kind of ignorance?” Windblade said, a smile twitching around her lips as she dodged back out of Chromia’s reach. Abruptly, she stopped and shook her head. “This isn’t really a time to be playing around,” she said, and straightened up, spreading out her wings. She looked abruptly serious and regal, like Caminus in the few pictures Chromia had seen of him in root mode. “Nautica,” Windblade started, “I know you know what you’re doing, so what do you –“

“I don’t know what you’ve got concocted for me,” Nautica interrupted, then put her head in her hands. “Wait, sorry, you’re asking me. Um, I was going to go around to his damaged parts and see if there was any water. Comm you if I saw any, go get the repair supplies from our shuttle, rinse and repeat.”

“Don’t worry,” Windblade said, smiling again. “And yes, that sounds good. You’re better than me with technical work anyway, so there’s no point in dragging you up with me to talk to Metroplex.”

“What am I, just nuts and bolts?” Chromia said, spreading her arm in mock hurt. Windblade levelled a glare at her, the effect ruined by her half-smile. “Hey, I’m not going to just stand around either,” Chromia said. “Just wanted to give you an idea of where I’ll be before you ran off. You go up to the brain now – I’ll look around closer to his head, because the last thing we need is his brain module or any of his deep-wired circuitry getting damaged. That way, I can play courier to you or Nautica if you need help.”

Windblade nodded. “That sounds fine to me. Better than having you stuck around getting fidgety like that one time in front of the Elders right before we left.” She turned to Nautica. “I’ll comm you with what Metroplex tells me. He’s said that both his primary and secondary nervous systems are still all online, plus his monitoring systems, so it’ll be as accurate as we can get.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t really looking forward to walking around a whole city,” Nautica commented.

“Now get a move on!” Chromia said, waving her on.

“Okay, okay!” Windblade said, ducking out through the doorway up. They could the clatter of her feet up the rungs of the ladder until the first trapdoor slammed shut.

Chromia turned to Nautica, critically looking at the drying seaweed coating her lower legs. “Sit down. You’re not tracking that stuff all inside the guy you want to repair.”

“What, not a believer in the curative power of oceans?” Nautica said, turning so Chromia could reach her turbines. “Get your hand between the blades,” she said, opening the blades as wide as they could go. “I can feel some driftwood in there.”

“Nope,” Chromia said, wriggling her hand until she got a grip on whatever was stuck in there. She tugged, twisting the driftwood until it cracked. She jerked her hand out, and felt the other part tumble further in. “Got half of it,” she said. “That’s a plus, right?”

“Barely,” Nautica said, exventing heavily. Some of the dried salt on her torso flaked off.

A trip back to the shuttle for a scrub brush and cleaner later, Nautica gave her turbines a careful spin.

“Ha!” she said, pumping a fist into the air. “Look at that, storm! Clean at last!”

“Now get moving,” Chromia said dryly.

“Whatever,” Nautica said, sticking out her glossa. “See you later!” She knelt down and pulled open the downwards hatch and hopped down a little awkwardly, carefully maneuvering her turbines so they wouldn’t get caught on the rim.

Chromia watched her disappear into Metroplex’s lower levels and then glanced towards the ladder towards the brain and Windblade. No. She had to do her job, and right now the greatest danger to Windblade was the ocean, not some bot tackling her with an energon blade. She kicked the wall. It was way easier when all she had to do was manhandle Windblade out of the line of fire and punch whoever was trying to hurt her. It was more fun, too.

She glared at the wall with the ocean just beyond it. Damn the water, making her go do maintenance. Her least favorite job on Caminus or off it. She stalked off down the first corridor out of the room. Might as well go sideways, if the other two had already taken up and down.

***

The second-to-last rung of the ladder gave out beneath Chromia’s feet, sending a jolt down through her tanks as she slipped downwards. She slammed her hands against the floor and braced herself, balancing on one foot on the third rung and bringing the other up to the first. The position wasn’t particularly comfortable (or even comfortable at all, since she didn’t have to suck it up when she was alone), especially as she half-jumped half-pushed off the first rung to tumble into the room. Ow.

She pushed herself up and ran a hand over her arms, checking her built-in lighting for any cracks. Standing up, she leaned over the tunnel she had come up through and exvented. Guess there was a reason to stick to the front tunnels, besides “they were the first ones we saw”.

Turning around, she saw a flicker of light from one room to her left. She hesitated, confused – wasn’t the room with the brain on the right - and then shook her head and started walking. No, she was going at this from the opposite direction this time. Left, not right. She peered around the corner into the room, and sure enough, Windblade hadn’t run off yet. What luck – at least they wouldn’t have a repeat of that time on Caminus one of the apprentice cityspeakers had gotten lost in the titan they were working on. Not naming names, of course.

Chromia stepped into the doorway, uncertain about touching anything in this delicate part of the titan. No leaks that she or Nautica could see, but toying around with brain modules wasn’t a good idea in any situation. Windblade was beyond her, close enough to reach out and touch the module. The brain module dwarfing her flashed greens, blues, reds too fast for Chromia to follow, coloring Windblade’s plating strange shades that no one in their right mind would paint themselves.

They spoke quickly, Chromia presumed, from the speed of it. Before the messages had been blinking binary at Windblade, slow enough for even Chromia to pick out the yes/no they spelled. Windblade’s wings were moving, dancing up and down and spreading in time with the colors flickering across the brain’s surface. Chromia doubted she was even aware of it – it was just another way to track the words. Pit, it was less annoying than than tapping a foot, and probably more natural to an airframe.

She couldn’t wait any more, and stepped forward into the room. She called out, “Does he feel any leaks?”

Abruptly the surface of the brain went dark. Chromia jerked forward, optics flaring, but Windblade only sighed, wings drooping down to their normal position. She looked red again, dulled by the dim lighting of Metroplex’s skull.

“It’s okay, not your fault,” she called, turning. “He’s just gone to sleep.”

“That’s how titans go to sleep?” Chromia asked. “No warning? Must be pretty unpleasant if they’re moving.”

Windblade smiled tiredly. “No, that’s just because he’s injured. He’s – well, he’s healing, but it takes a lot out of him to talk. The water’s not seeping in anywhere, but he says – I mean, I think, it’s harder to get a good translation when he’s hurting – that he’s putting all his self-repair shoring up his walls.”

“So we’re safe?” Chromia said. “No problems?”

“Yes, we’re safe,” Windblade said. “But Metroplex –“ She broke off, and a frown flickered across her face. “Focusing repairs on his walls makes his eye and his other wounds hurt more, but Nautica was right – we’re deep enough that any storm damage will be fairly minor. He’s just sleeping now.”  She pointed at the inner workings of the brain module, which still flickered with multicolored light. “See? The whole thing’s all gone into lower-level thought, while he devotes most of his effort to self-repair. I guess working on his walls solves the problem of those old gunfire wounds, too.”

Chromia sighed, and gave in to the urge to lean against the wall. Her tires cushioned her and reminded her of transformation. Damn, she should probably take some time to just drive around the halls. “Yeah, yeah, I see now. Why couldn’t they send two of you guys along, so we bodyguards don’t panic over bedtime?” She sent a quick ping to Nautica: //The big guy says things look alright, so you can come up now.//

//Really? Sweet, I was getting tired of wandering down sets of identical corridors. I had to paint a lot more arrows down here.// came her response. //Got a little paint-splattered, so I’m going to get my second wash of the day.//

Chromia sent back an acknowledgment ping, and turned her attention back to Windblade, who had caught on to her second conversation with a cityspeaker’s ease in sensing transmissions. She arched her eye ridges as Chromia refocused on her, and mouthed _Are you paying attention?_

Chromia mouthed back _Sorry, I started to drift off there_. Windblade rolled her optics.

“Anyway, they wouldn’t do that. They would have had to send another set of guards,” she said. “And you know, I would have sent that ping myself.”

“Too slow, gracious leader,” Chromia said. “And those guards would be more workers than the Elders are willing to lose,”

 “I wish they’d have gambled on whatever we brought back from Cybertron making up for that.” Windblade said, shaking her helm.

Chromia rolled her optics. “I doubt that,” she said bitterly. Windblade looked at her, the dim lighting darkening her facepaint until her optics looked sunken in her face. “Look at Metroplex. Do you really think we’ll come home in glory with energy enough to save Caminus?”

“I don’t know,” Windblade said finally. “But – as a cityspeaker we were always told that the presence of a titan was glory enough.”

“Is it?” Chromia asked. Typical titan romanticizing.

“Metroplex needs our help.” Windblade said. “It doesn’t matter how glorious it is. Letting him die would be – it would be something I can’t quite comprehend.”

They stood in silence. “Me neither, for what it’s worth,” Chromia said. She shook her helm. “I can’t believe these bots, letting titans fall in disrepair like they’re just starships.”

“I’d like to think they would have helped Metroplex sooner, if they’d known,” Windblade said. She stepped towards the door and jerked her head. _You coming?_

Chromia nodded and followed her out into the hall. When she got there, Windblade  was leaning against the wall, her wings stretched to their fullest. She waited for Chromia to walk closer, then continued,  “Thunderclash wanted to help him. He would have done more, I think, if the Vis Vitalis had had more energy.”

“Yeah,” Chromia said, not knowing what else to say. He’d brought them to the greatest titan that ever lived. On Caminus, that would have been enough to earn him a statue in the center halls of Caminus himself. The Elders would waste vital energy on something so precious as a titan hunter – anything to discover the long-lost secrets of Cybertron.

Windblade reached out and took her hand. “He’ll wake up in a couple of hours. Titans aren’t meant to sleep for hours at a time.”

“Even if they need it?” Chromia asked, sliding down to sit on the floor.

“Even if they need it.” Windblade said, letting herself be pulled down.

Chromia leaned against Windblade, careful to avoid her wings. “I wouldn’t like that. I don’t want to be jerked out of recharge for a status check every two hours.”

“I remember you didn’t want to be woken up to hear Thunderclash out. Something about offworlders having to wait until the day actually started, because not everything ran on their home calendar?”

“You’re one to talk,” Chromia teased. “I seem to remember you falling asleep in the breaks during weapons practice.”

Windblade laughed, and swatted her in the arm. “I remember you tripping over your halberd and nearly taking off part of your helm.”

“Hey, that was genuinely scary!” Chromia protested. “That was a tricky drill we were doing too.”

“You actually remember that?” Windblade asked.

“Only because I nearly cut my helm open!” Chromia said. She leaned back against her wheels and let her helm hit the wall. “See, the memory is making me faint.”

Windblade grabbed Chromia’s left wheel and pulled herself up to plant a kiss on the side of her helm. “Did that wake you up?” she asked, shifting so she leaned over Chromia’s face, a slight smile on her lips.

“No,” Chromia said. “Maybe try it again?” She offered up her cheesiest grin, and Windblade started to laugh, leaning back against the wall with her wings spread.

“That’s the most cliché thing you’ve ever said to me,” she said as her laughter faded, and kissed Chromia again. “Maybe I can kiss it out of you.” She grinned, and wiggled her eyebrows.

Now it was Chromia’s turn to laugh. “That’s pretty silly yourself,” she said. After a moment she added, “My queen of the Camian dawn.” The words were strange and unfamiliar in her mouth, and sounded unpracticed, like stumbling through a new drill.

“You read poetry?” Windblade teased, optics glimmering all the same. “I thought you only liked being a big name in tournaments back on Caminus.”

“That’s not everything I do,” Chromia protested, shifting closer to Windblade. “’Camians must be well-rounded,’” She quoted, putting her hands on Windblade’s shoulders to bring her closer. “One of my early instructors told us that when I was first forged. She was pretty weird, but that’s not the point.”

“I agree,” Windblade said, and leaned in as close to Chromia’s face as she could without touching it, kneeling  to get her head on the same level. “The point is – “

Chromia’s optics brightened with anticipation. “The point is, cityspeaker –“ she said, and shifted her weight, flipping Windblade around and pinning her to the wall. “– you don’t let down your guard.”

“Hey!” Windblade exclaimed, optics dilating with surprise. She tilted her head up, almost catching Chromia’s cheek with her golden helm ornament. “That’s not fair!”

“Life’s not fair,” Chromia said, and kissed her.

Windblade pulled back first. “Cheater.”

“Whatever,” Chromia said, trying to keep from smiling. She bowed her head and rested it against Windblade’s.  She felt Windblade shift to lean into her touch, and reached out to flick her finger against one of her fans. Windblade batted her hand away. After a pause, she reached up and placed a hand on one of Chromia’s wheels, comforting, reassuring.

They sat like that for a long time, quiet with the knowledge of nearness. Their engines hummed, vibrating through both their bodies. It was soft – they weren’t running hot with disease or injury – but it overpowered the sound of the water shifting outside, groaning across Metroplex’s plating while he slept. They were safe.


End file.
